Institutional Critique at the Post-Digital Turn: Museums and Databases

Registration requested for on-site participation.: https://pretix.eu/imageplus/konferenz2022/

 

Livestream via www.youtube.com/user/DieAngewandteWien

 

This symposium organised by the IMAGE+ Platform for Open Art Education focuses on two interconnected failures of present-day art institutions. On the one hand, museums have vigorously concretized their already existing initiatives for digitising their collections and exhibition practice during the various lockdowns by advertising this promising virtualization with its expansion of participatory possibilities museums have boosted their accessibility and strengthened democratisation of their own institutions. In doing so, museums have adopted the entrepreneurial paradigm of a profit oriented Silicon Valley tech company without, however, making the associated advertising and sales mechanisms the subject of a critical debate. On the other hand, one has to mention the failings of an exclusivist, elitist and white art history and its implementation in art institutions. Neither have sufficiently reflected on their research or their collection and display policies for decades. This is true, in particular, with respect to vestiges of racism, antisemitism, antiziganism or antiableism and an orientation towards decolonial, queer, queer-feminist or intersectional criteria.